Glad to hear you’re doing okay, Wesley. And thanks for fighting my ignorance.
And I’d like to apologize for what I said earlier about schizophrenia. I was speaking out of ignorance.
There seem to be an awful lot of claims being made about schizophrenia and schizophrenics without any accompanying cites.
Just reading through this Wikipedia link on schizophrenia, I have some serious reservations at the notion of someone meeting the diagnosis criteria of this disorder being legally allowed to carry a firearm. In all honesty, who could argue?
Criteria
According to the revised fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, three diagnostic criteria must be met:[63]
1.Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment). Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder
Grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms: Blunted affect (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation)
If the delusions are judged to be bizarre, or hallucinations consist of hearing one voice participating in a running commentary of the patient’s actions or of hearing two or more voices conversing with each other, only that symptom is required above. The speech disorganization criterion is only met if it is severe enough to substantially impair communication.
2.Social or occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.
3.Significant duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Me.
Notice this says “two” of the following. Not all.
If I believe there are magical poppy plants growing under my bed, this is concerning and says something about my state of mind. But why should the public be scared about me? Delusional =! crazy killer
See above. Just because I hear the poppy plants singing “I Feel Pretty” does not mean I’m about to kill myself or other people.
Yeah, not seeing how this is the least bit scary for anyone except the person suffering from this. Schizophrenics don’t have a monopoly on disorganized speech or thoughts.
Can be scary, but only because it indicates someone who is losing control of themselves and needs serious help. You’d be able to see such a person coming a mile away, though. You don’t need the state to tell you not to sell someone in a catatonic stupor a gun.
I know zombies are scary in horror movies, but in real life? People with these symptoms don’t have enough energy or care to go on shooting sprees.
This says nothing about violence or the individual’s level of insight.
Schizophrenia is no picnic and it’s debilitating, yes. But that’s what makes it an illness. All illnesses, by definition, are disturbing and effect one’s life negatively.
Which only means a person has a few of the symptoms above. If they’ve never been psychotic but they’ve experienced catatonia, thought disturbance, and some negative symptoms, they can go home with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. None of these make a person particularly violent or suicidal.
I wouldn’t give someone with severe schizophrenia a gun, if I was caring for someone with this disease. But nor would I give them access to a car or leave them alone by themselves. The same with someone with Alzheimer’s or mental retardation. I don’t know why I should fear schizophrenics more than any other group of “unstable” people.
Lest someone think this is a hypothetical argument that would never happen in the real world, I will attest that I avoided treatment for depression during a time when my employment depended on maintaining a security clearance.
When I did finally seek treatment, (found a better job) I was careful to avoid getting close to telling the shrink things that, as a mandatory reporter, he would be obliged to report to authorities. The fact that I was not fully candid probably had negative consequences for the efficacy of my counseling. So while fine in theory, such laws do have unintended consequences that can, in many cases, produce exactly the opposite of the result sought.
How many of those people actually used concealed carry permits to commit their crimes? The Tuscon shooter did and I’m not sure how those kinds of regulations work in the military, although the Fort Hood shooter did have a CCP. The DC snipers drove around in a car they’d modified to allow the shooter to hide and fire from the trunk, and it goes without saying there’s no permit for that. I’m not sure about the VT shooter. I remember some outrage that he would have been eligible for such a permit, but not that he had one. So with that in mind I’m not sure CCP leads to “chronic, low-level lone-wolf-like-terrorism” - and we’re also talking about four shooting sprees over the course of a decade. It’s horrible but these are so rare that I’m not confident in saying that you could get rid of them by banning concealed carry, for example. I’d rather see rules that just focus on getting crazy people with violent tendencies from getting guns, whether that’s a mental health panel or a registry of opinions from their doctors or something like that. And the states would need to cooperate with it.
Just an anecdote here: My best-friend from high-school and shortly after; who had a family history of schizophrenia (his father was a diagnosed schizophrenic who later committed suicide), started showing symptoms of schizophrenia (suddenly) at age 21. Within a period of just two months or so, after exhibiting delusions, hallucinations (he was talking to his dead father through the televison, amongst other things) and paranoia, he shot himself in the head with a shotgun, killing himself.
Now he was always the “normal one” of his family too. Of all his family members, he was always the one who didn’t seem off-balance or ‘nutty’. He had a brother who, if anyone had to guess prior to the suicide, who have picked him to be the one to kill himself. His mother is nuts as well. Yet he was the one who ended up becoming schizophrenic and committing suicide. It was a terrible time and I am still saddened by what happened. It came on so fast and without much warning. 
AZ does not require a permit for concealed carry. Not sure about Tucson city regulations, but CCW is handled at the state level most places.
There is a real life examples.
NPR has been full of stories about soldiers with PTSD who avoid treatment to prevent desertification.
Health professionals with drug habits who avoid seeking help due to a loss of their licence.
The better solution here would be to fight the stigmatization of mental illness and improve treatment rates.
Nitpick: Mirtazapine is a tetracyclic antidepressant.
You don’t say when the tape you listened to was recorded, but I don’t think we can assume Zimmerman was on these medications at the time of the Martin shooting. He may have been prescribed some or all of them after the incident. Even if he were medicated as described, I doubt it had anything to do with the events surrounding Trayvon Martin’s death.
I don’t consider depressives or schizophrenics to be particularly inclined to gun violence, except perhaps against themselves. More often when you hear of someone who has committed shootings that can be attributed to a mental illness the shooter suffers from either some sort of psychosis (which can occur in depressives and schizophrenics but is not always present in those groups) or a personality disorder.
I’m trying to imagine how such a ban would be administered. Would there be a standardized exam to determine who is or is not stable enough to own a gun? How much depression is too much depression? Is a single episode in adolescence of what some doctor called “schizophrenia” enough to cost a person the right to own firearms for life? Will the state have access to the medical files of these people, or will another layer of bureaucracy be added involving state-employed psychiatrists? (This is most unlikely given the current shortage of psychiatrists.)
Even if it weren’t a constitutional nightmare in the making, I’d be opposed to it just because it would be impossible to implement in any way that would make sense economically.
About 20% to 30% according to most sources I’ve run across.
Weeeeeel, I’m a treated depressive and there is no way I should have a gun, not because of the violence I would perpetrate on others but for what I’d do to myself. Too bad, too, because I LOVE guns. I still have my air guns, but they aren’t particularly powerful and it would be embarrassing to explain to the ER doctor what I was doing when I failed to kill myself.
“Speed holes. They make the head go faster.”
I can’t remember when I last read an OP and thought, “this guy is on to something”, and realized he wasn’t when I read the second post in the thread. :smack:
As an actual no-kidding dysthymic, I do not own a firearm for fear I would shoot myself in a funk. If diagnosed depressives (including me) were denied access to personal firearms–outside of time on duty in some kind of public service, such as being deputized for the* ad hoc* resistance against the Martians–I would be sanguine about it.
But is that the right answer? I don’t know.
Not all depressives are suicidal, though. And you are more a testament that even sometimes-suicidal depressives can handle banning guns for themselves. We need to see if there is a need for additional regulations.
The best I could see some sort of ban working out is if there could be some procedure for a family member or psychologist to file for a revocation of a gun permit, requiring them to prove past history of violence or self-harming behaviors. And the ban would be time limited and have to be reaffirmed based on subsequent behavior.
Also, concealed carry exists partly because people are more scared of people who brandish guns than those who don’t. So taking away concealed carry is a horrible idea if you hold that it has any value at all.
That seems an awful low bar to use when denying someone a constitutional right.